


Sometimes Your Worst Self Is Your Best Self

by Devilc



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV), True Detective
Genre: Blow Jobs, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Hand Jobs, M/M, Yuletide Treat, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 14:03:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5459090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilc/pseuds/Devilc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Membership in the rapidly crumbling "brotherhood" of uniformed services saved Paul's life … long enough to land him in a dimly-lit, flag-dominated basement full of chain link pens straight out of Guantanamo, in one of the army's last command posts in the greater LA area.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes Your Worst Self Is Your Best Self

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bond Girl (Bond_Girl)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bond_Girl/gifts).



> The prompts were:  
> Out of all people, Paul could really do with a friend. Or a boyfriend. --- I think it's clear that Emily deserves better than a relationship that Paul built on lies and little blue pills, and that there are many ways to be great parents and true friends/partners without Paul and Emily staying together for the wrong reasons. --- I thought it was a shame Paul didn't get to know that hot and funny street hooker guy Tyler from 203 who teased Paul about the angsty cop drama he was rolling. There was a clear attraction and a spark of chemistry between these two - I was really expecting them to make out, but nope.  
> &  
> A fix-it story for Paul - where he stays alive! I want him to embrace it: his men, his looks, his scars - everything. "You’re a survivor. Everything else is just dust in your eyes–blink it away, man."  
> &  
> Apocalypse! Paul could totally win the whole post-apocalyptic survival deal. Hell, he'd probably cope better in that kind of society. 
> 
> \------
> 
> Yeah, so not only did I write a crossover, I did a mashup of the prompts.
> 
> The title comes from a S2 quote by Frank Semyon. Paul's a survivor, but to do that in this new world he's been thrust into? His worst self will be the one with the winning hand, so it seemed appropriate.
> 
> Some of the dialogue comes verbatim from the last 3 episodes of FTWD, and since this is actually, officially a True Detective AU, I made some minor changes (and one major one) to the continuity and canon of both shows.
> 
> Anyhow, dear Bond Girl, when I scrolled through a list of "Dear Yuletide Writer" letters, this prompt grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go. Kind of tenacious. Just like Paul.

Membership in the rapidly crumbling "brotherhood" of uniformed services saved Paul's life … long enough to land him in a dimly-lit, flag-dominated basement full of chain link pens straight out of Guantanamo, in one of the army's last command posts in the greater LA area. About 30 minutes after his arrival, his cellmate, a bearded heavy-set guy by the name of Douglas, had a complete nervous breakdown, so the MPs hauled him away. Smart move, that. People were already panicky, and somebody like Douglas could be the spark that flipped them from confused apathy to a full on fight-or-flight riot.

With a bone deep sigh, Paul hunkered down on a bench, closed his eyes, and collected himself the way his military training, which he'd never thought he'd be using against his own government (what was left of it, at least) taught him. Three times already he'd gone over the route he'd memorized through the building into the cage, and now he went over the route three more times.

And all three times, like a hiss of static in the background, other memories fought to creep in. He forced them back. 

(Not. Now. Later.)

(Because, like it or not, there was always a "later".)

Footsteps, key in the lock. Paul's eyes snapped open. The guards had another ~~prisoner~~ "medical detainee" to put in with him. He watched the masked and gloved MPs, observing the details of their procedure. (Fuck. They weren't as sloppy as he'd hoped, but slack enough that if things went any further south, he could take advantage of them.)

The new guy in the cage was in his mid 40s. Black. Dressed in a suit (but no tie) that cost at least a month of Paul's take home pay. Annoyed, but not visibly frightened. Sure of himself. And, just as Paul cataloged him, he catalogued Paul: White guy, 30-something, rumpled, sweat-stained white T-shirt, CHP motorcycle breeches with the stripe up the side, motorcycle boots. The man raised an eyebrow as he dragged his eyes up Paul one more time, then he nodded curtly, his inventory taken, and turned away.

Paul pushed a deep breath out. He figured that if they stayed here long enough, then they'd get around to talking, but until then ….

He let his eyes roam, making mental notes, searching for patterns, made himself review his route through the building yet again.

In the next cage over, some fool banged and kicked the chain link, shouting to the guards about the rights he didn't realize he no longer had. This place, reeking of piss, puke, and fear, didn't exist, and if it did, it went by some completely innocuous name in the documentation, such as "human resources" or "inventory and logistics." Paul would know. He'd worked a few times in places like this over in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is how he came to the conclusion that whoever had set up these pens knew their shit. There would be no breakouts, not this moment. Any chance to escape would come during a transfer, or if discipline snapped.

~oo(0)oo~

The black man's name turned out to be Strand. Slick, wheeler-dealer type, could sell ice to an Eskimo.

Paul fielded his verbal probes and feints in such a way that Strand very quickly discovered that Paul wasn't buying whatever he was selling and stopped talking to him except when necessary.

~oo(0)oo~

About an hour after the second MRE and fifth temperature check of the day, which made Paul reckon it was evening, the gate slid open and the MPs tossed in another man: disheveled club clothing, with a scrape on his jaw that looked like it came from a hard tackle on pavement, a tangle of shoulder length brown curls, and big brown eyes. Early 20s, beautiful, scared, but working not to show it.

 _Fucking hell._ That guy from the club he'd visited undercover a little over a year ago. The one who -- Tyler. The name popped into Paul's head, unbidden, along with other memories of that night, that, damn him, leaked in no matter how hard Paul tried to stop them.

Picking himself up off the floor, Tyler held his chin high, his eyes flashed with recognition after a moment, and he coolly nodded at Paul before making his way to a bench on the other side of the pen.

(Apparently he wasn't as drug-addled as a lot of those club kids if he still remembered a guy he met once, for a few hours, over a year ago.)

The black man sized Tyler up, and Paul thought he saw a flicker of interest there for a moment, so Paul glared at him, telling him with his eyes to mind his own damn business, to not start up his verbal games. With a shrug, Strand turned away and started putting his hooks into a guard named Melvin … the one that Paul had already pegged as being crooked and a ringleader.

Perhaps Strand's talents would yield something after all, because Paul sure as fuck didn't have a silver tongue.

~oo(0)oo~

He relived _IT_ that night some time after lights out (which really just meant lights dimmer) at 10pm. His first night here, he'd crashed into an exhausted, dreamless sleep. He fell asleep nearly as hard and as fast again, probably because (despite the musty blanket, piss smell, and hard floor) he'd slept in worse places -- nobody here was actively trying to kill him. 

(Yet.)

The CHP's last command post had finally fallen apart; Paul had held out longer than most. He was going to get Emily and the baby, grab his bug out bag and some other gear, and the three of them would head west to the Santa Monica Mountains, just past Topanga Canyon.

He staggered up the steps to the front door and opened it. The neighborhood looked like a warzone (he squashed down hard on memories of Iraq) and he could hear gunfire a block or two away. First time home in 96 hours. Emily had not answered his calls or texts for the last 36, by his reckoning, but there was no phone and no power anymore, so maybe that explained it.

The stench hit him like a hammer. Emily. Turned. Skinbag. A part of him screamed to get out now, to get back on the bike and _GO_! He had emptied his service pistol on the ride over, so he beat her back with whatever he could lay his hands on -- gore splattering the front of his tan uniform shirt -- until he made it to the knife block in the kitchen. Chef's knife through the eye. She dropped like a sack of potatoes. Staggering, he managed to snag the utility knife, knowing it was too late, but he could not stop his legs from taking him down the hall and through the nursery door.

The baby.

On the floor.

Eaten.

That's where the National Guard found him. Covered in gore and doing something halfway in between laughing and crying because he had given up everything for this life -- this never ending lie of a normal life though he hated it as much as he wanted it -- and now it was all gone.

With a raspy howl, Paul's body shot to full flight-or-fight wakefulness -- something hammered into him by Iraq -- grabbing, twisting, followed by a shocked yelp from Tyler.

"Hey man!" Tyler squeaked, rocking back on to his ass as soon as Paul released him, "What gives?"

"Where …?" Paul let the word trail off as he locked eyes with Tyler and his mind finally caught up with his body as the last echoes of the nightmare faded. "I …. Thanks. It's Tyler, right?"

(Yeah, of course he remembered Tyler. It's hard to forget somebody when he wanted to fuck them so badly.)

"Yeah. Tyler. Don't remember yours, though." Tyler shrugged awkwardly. "I mean, I remember _you_ , just not your name."

 _Occupational hazard,_ Paul thought, but didn't say. Because, well, what would be the point of it? Also, fuck it. He didn't want to alienate Tyler. Paul wanted this connection with him. Something about them clicked. Even here. Even now. The world was falling apart, and Paul wanted this. Needed it … or something like it. As much as he could get, and he might as well take what he could get, however he could get it.

Tyler's eyes bored into his. "So … what is your name again?"

Paul snorted at himself for getting lost in thought like that. "Paul. Paul Woodrugh." He shifted and sat up, patting the cement next to him. After a moment, Tyler scooted over. Across the cell from them, Strand -- he still hadn't given his first name -- looked at them for three seconds before closing his eyes and rolling over.

"Thanks." Paul whispered to Tyler. "It was a pretty intense nightmare."

"You were moaning and thrashing."

"I'll bet." He leaned back against the chainlink and closed his eyes. A few minutes later, the chainlink shifted and creaked as Tyler leaned against it, too.

He tried to drift off, but, thanks to the nightmare, his body veered between exhaustion and hypervigilance. As soon as he fell asleep, a snore, a cough, a groan, a nightmare shout from somebody else in a nearby pen snapped him back. Then Tyler sagged into him, not quite snoring, but breathing deep and heavy, a little like a purr, and Paul latched onto that, and followed it down.

~oo(0)oo~

The lights came up at 6am, or what Paul guessed must be 6am. First temperature check of the day. The slop pails were emptied about an hour later. Paul would've fucking killed for a cup of coffee. When they finally handed out vegetarian MREs for breakfast, he tore it open and prayed for a packet of instant coffee. Based on what he had observed about the shift changes and schedules, Paul estimated the time at 8 or 9am.

"Hold some back," he said to Tyler. "They only feed us twice a day."

Strand nodded a confirmation as Paul stirred his packet of Taster's Choice into a plastic cup. MREs were designed to feed soldiers doing heavy work, so twice a day was plenty for people sitting in a cage on their asses. He kept the pasta marinara and packet of Tang for later.

When he couldn't stand the idleness any longer, Paul stripped off his shirt, figuring there was no point in getting it even more sweaty and nasty, and began working out. Tyler gasped when he saw the scars on Paul's chest and back.

"What happened?" Strand asked.

Paul closed his eyes, counted to three and asked, "Which ones? Bullet or burn?"

"How about both." A statement, not a request, a telling, not an asking.

 _Right_. Paul cleared his throat against the emotion that threatened to rust it shut and said, "The burn is from a homemade firebomb in Iraq." _I lived. Three of my squad didn't_. "The bullet scar comes from an attempted hit on me a year ago." He ghosted his hand over the pucker, which was still pinker than his other mementos of a life less ordinary.

"So, you're a hero?" Tyler asked.

"No. I don't consider myself a hero." Paul forced the words out, hoping it came off as modesty and not evasion. _I did some ugly shit last year, and over there, and I'd do it all again if I had to. I'm not a hero. I'm a fucking war criminal, that's what._

Strand looked him up and down. "Attempted hit?"

Paul locked eyes with him. "Yeah. Attempted. I was deep in a case and they tried to get me." He paused. "They didn't."

All of which told the truth and missed the mark by a million miles. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists against the memories. Walking into it, knowing it was a trap, but looking for the reverse. The _depth_ of Miguel's betrayal. His payback. The smell of cement, gunpowder, grease, dirt, and blood. (So much blood.) The flash-bang of gunfire in a dark and enclosed space. Stalking his stalkers, setting them up. (Feeling so alive and in the groove as he danced the razor's edge.) Staggering out of the exit, reaching for his phone, some sort of sixth sense telling him to look over and step aside a split second before the bullet Burris intended for his back caught him in the side of his chest, sending him ass over tea-kettle, phone clattering to the ground, shattering. Sobbing with pain as he rolled over and let his last shot fly, total luck job, catching Burris right in the throat. Half crawling, half staggering, begging the first passerby to call 911, shouting Velcorro's number to the EMTs, praying that he and Bezzerides would get to him in the hospital first before somebody else showed up to finish the job.

"I see." Strand's voice jostled Paul back to the present. "How many?"

"Six." Actually he couldn't remember the exact number any more -- despite hours of talking about it to the review board -- just that it was more than four.

Strand cocked his head and _looked_ at Paul, reassessing him.

Paul shrugged and then got on with his workout. A round of pushups, squat jumps, ab crunches, planks, shadow boxing, and jumping jacks. He pushed himself carefully, not allowing himself to break a true sweat, but just enough to get the blood flowing and himself limbered up. 

(Through all of it, he could feel Tyler's eyes on him. Hungry.)

He cooled down by pacing back and forth across the cage. He longed to take a run, to put the earbuds in and lose himself in the music and the sound of his own breathing as his feet took him down some canyon trail. (Not fucking likely anymore.) If nothing else, his basic workout had taken some of the jangle out of his nerves and got him recentered.

"Why are you bothering?" Tyler asked as Paul passed by him yet again.

Paul thought about it during the course of his next back and forth, and when he came back to Tyler, he said, "I grew up in a shit hole trailer park with a floozy for a mom. When I was 16, a friend of mine shared this book by Henry Rollins, and do you know what he said?" Paul paused a moment before saying, "'Discipline is money in the bank.' Changed my life." He reached up, stretching for the ceiling, feeling his spine crack in response. (Feeling Tyler's eyes zero in on his abs, his davids, the treasure trail.) "Mom was a floozy and we lived in a shitty place with her flavor of the week because she had no discipline. I promised myself I'd be different."

Tyler's eyebrows arched as he said, "I still don't get the workout."

"It's discipline," Paul replied, edge in his voice. "I've still got myself. Even here, I've still got myself. I don't have to sit around all day --" he almost said, _looking pretty_ , but saved himself at the last moment, " -- like a bump on a log."

Strand just sighed and rolled his eyes at that.

Whatever. Paul tore open the wetnap from his MRE and used that to swipe at his face and then his pits. It didn't even begin to do the job, but he had to do something.

At midday, the MPs gave them each two one liter bottles of water. Paul used half of one to soak his T-shirt before wringing it out in an effort to get rid of the worst of the stink.

Through it all, once again he could feel Tyler's eyes roving over him, and Tyler didn't bother to hide his gawking. Paul tried to stop his eyes from seeking out Tyler in return … and didn't quite succeed.

(Because it just wasn't fair. Why did he have to be so fucking close? And still so fucking hot in his clearly worn-for-a-week clothes under the kind of florescent lights that did nobody a favor.)

Then again, if Strand said something, called him a faggot? Paul would teach him who was who at the zoo.

(And if a guard did it? Well, Paul knew better than backtalk the guards. He knew damn good and well what they could, and would, do in a place like this, because he'd seen it done and done it himself. More than once.)

~oo(0)oo~

Some time in the night the guards dragged the next "guest" into the pen. Twentysomething … but dressed in his grandpa's tan windbreaker, plaid shirt, and khakis, all of it hanging on his thin, almost gaunt, frame. Sallow complexion. Greasy hair. Dark eyes that rabbeted everywhere.

Everything about him screamed "junkie."

Paul felt Tyler's body tense against his as soon as the guards left.

Strand's eyes lit up at the sight of the poor bastard. "So, then, who the hell are you?" He all but purred.

The young man ignored him and just curled into one of the crappy blankets, eyes glazed with a sort of numb disbelief and dread.

A part of Paul felt a flicker of sympathy for the guy. CHiPs like didn't often deal with the dregs of skid row, but he knew that you'd be hard pressed to pick a worse time or place to go through withdrawal. The other part of him took a harder line. This guy, like every other fucking junkie on the planet, had brought it on himself. And now Paul (and Tyler) were penned in with his about to be _wretchedly_ sick ass.

"I know him," Tyler whispered in Paul's ear. "His name's Nick." After a short pause, he added, "He got kicked out of the club when _IT_ got too obvious."

Paul glanced at Tyler, encouraging him to continue.

"He's sweet, but _daaaammmmnnnnn_ ," Tyler said, barely audible. "I'm kind of surprised that he's still alive."

"That bad?" Paul murmured back.

Tyler nodded. "Yeah, that bad."

"Care to share with the rest of the class?" Strand asked.

Tyler drew a breath to speak, but paused, his eyes seeking Paul's for guidance.

Paul shifted, leaning ever so slightly back into Tyler. "Go on, tell him."

"His name's Nick. He used to -- I used to see him around this club I --" Tyler searched for his next words, "-- worked at."

 _Oh, good one,_ Paul thought darkly. _That was as subtle as a brick through a window._ And yet, he didn't move away from Tyler. The world was ending and he was sitting next to a guy who hustled and turned tricks … and it didn't bother him the way it once would've.

Strand mmmm'd at the news and let the matter drop.

~oo(0)oo~

Something subtle shifted over the course of the day. It was hard to pin-point the exact moment the change occurred, but Paul knew it all too well: discipline breaking down.

He could see the same knowledge mirrored in Strand's eyes.

~oo(0)oo~

Nick failed the next temperature check.

"Boy's not sick, Melvin," Strand said to the senior NCO as he and two corporals came into the pen to remove the shaky and feverish Nick.

Oh, Nick was sick, all right, but not _sick_.

Paul watched from his position in the corner with Tyler, trying to figure out Strand's play as he removed first one, and then the other cufflink and passed them over to Melvin. A slight scuffle between Strand and the guards occurred as they released Nick, who promptly vomited -- all sharp bile on top of sour acid -- in one of the corners. He'd almost made the piss bucket. 

The gate clanged shut and the lock clicked into place.

"I was wishing we had something to mask the smell of urine," Strand said as Nick went through another round of heaves. "You saved the day."

Paul handed Tyler his half empty bottle of water and gave him a little nudge towards Nick. "Tell him to rinse and spit."

"The game has changed," Strand said to them, but mostly to Nick, (whom he did not offer to help, Paul noted) "We return to the old rules --" his eyes flicked to Paul for a moment "-- and the people who won the last round with their grande lattes and their frequent flyer miles are about to become the buffet. I look at you and I see somebody who knows the meaning of necessity."

Paul laughed bitterly inside. Not so very long ago, he had tried so very hard to be an upstanding member of that grande latte club.

Nick wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. "Well, I'm an addict," Nick replied, voice reedy and thin.

"No, " Strand replied with a crooked grin, "You are a heroin addict. That's the gold standard, don't sell yourself short." Then, quietly, to both him and Paul, "The soldiers are leaving."

Paul nodded at that. Not only had discipline started eroding away, but he knew what preparation to abandon a post looked like.

"I'm going to require men with your talents when I make my move." He paused and looked meaningfully again at the both of them.

"What?" Nick asked.

With a turn of his wrist, Strand showed the key that he had palmed.

Right. Now they waited for when the time came to make their move.

Paul canted his head and whispered, low and throaty (he didn't want any sharp sounds to catch Strand's attention) into Tyler's ear, "Stick close to me and do what I say if you want to live. Strand's …" _a flavor of sociopath_ "goal oriented, and you're not a part of his plan." He drew in a breath and pushed the next words out, "But you're a part of _my_ plans, so I'm telling you now that when it comes apart, it's going to be fast, hard, and _ugly_. I can get you out, but let me make it crystal clear, there will be no coming back to rescue you." _There's going to be no coming back for anybody, and the only way out is through._

Tyler's eyes bored into Paul's and in their depths Paul saw nervousness and jitters, but not _fear_. "I've taken care of myself out on the streets since I was 14, " he murmured back, low and steady. "I'm tougher than I look."

_I hope so, because when I think about what's coming in the next day -- tops -- I think we're all going to have to be even tougher than we imagined._

~oo(0)oo~

"Trying to look good for the end of the world?" Paul asked when Strand straightened his lapels like he had someplace else to be. Chow was late and they'd missed the last two temperature checks. People were starting to get restless. "I think that big job interview has been indefinitely postponed." The fact that the missing key hadn't yet been discovered meant that it probably never would be.

Strand smoothed down the front of his dress slacks -- slacks that still looked crisp and fresh after days in here while Paul's uniform pants now looked like hobo couture -- before he replied, "Did you know that in the slums of Brazzaville, in the Republic of the Congo, there are men, Sapeurs, they're called, who dress every day in three piece suits?"

"And so?" Paul replied, more than a little shark in his smile.

Strand's voice had an almost kind overtone to it as he spoke, "You exercise to give yourself a sense of agency over your situation." He gestured to himself. "I, like a member of the _Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes_ , have chosen the path of the sharp dressed man."

Paul nodded and his smile was genuine this time, "I _get_ it. Where are you from?" _You weren't born to that suit, so was this your way of saying you're really straight outta Compton?_

Strand shook his head. "It's not where we were from any more that matters. It's can we get to where we're going?"

 _Bullshit_ , Paul thought, _where we're from has everything to do with how we're going to get there or die trying._

"I'm from El Sereno," Nick offered as he climbed onto the bench next to Strand.

Strand smiled wistfully as he said, "I'd gentrify the shit out of El Sereno. Another time, another world."

~oo(0)oo~

It happened almost simultaneously: gunfire, flickering lights, the alarm claxon.

Strand stood and adjusted his coat. "Full auto. Close. It's time to go." He looked for the key. Nick held it out to him, and Strand smiled at him almost proudly as he reached out and took it. Smooth of Nick, because Paul had no idea when he might have done it.

A moment later, Strand had them out the door, making a beeline for the back entrance, as people in the surrounding cages called out to be released.

"It's not one size fits all," Strand said almost conversationally to a woman who begged him. In answer to something Nick asked, he replied, "We are not going to help them because helping them could hurt us."

Tyler grabbed Strand's arm and snarled, "Hand over the fucking key."

"Do it." Paul commanded as he held out his hand.

Strand pfftd and rolled his eyes. "Fine." He pressed the key into Paul's hand.

Paul turned and flicked the key into a pen a few doors down. It probably wouldn't work, and Strand _was_ right, too many people loose right now would hinder their escape attempt. They were counting on being a few people slipping through the chaos. But it would shut Nick and Tyler up and forestall future doubts, questions, mutinies in the immediate future. 

He could almost see the gears spinning in Strand's mind as he said, "Well. We've given them a fighting chance. Now move."

Up the stairs and through a door … so far their path gybed with Paul's mental map. 

"Where are we going?" Nick asked as they went through the hall and down a hallway.

"We need a ride," Strand replied.

"And then?" Paul asked.

"Abigail," Strand said as if it explained things.

~oo(0)oo~

They scooted down the hallway, journey punctuated by flickering lights and more automatic weapons fire, ducking behind a door (well, Strand grabbed Nick and pulled him in) when soldiers started pouring down a staircase less than three yards ahead. Either they were quick enough not to be seen, or the soldiers were so focused on the crisis -- and Paul didn't want to think about what _it_ might be -- that they didn't see them. After a few moments, when no more soldiers came, Paul lead them forward and Strand shut the door behind. 

They continued down the hallway -- the posters on the wall and the logos making it clear this was a large local community college -- through the next set of doors, into a small auditorium which had probably been used for staging ops until a few minutes ago. Now it held two dead soldiers, one of whom was being gorged on by a walker, while more of the dead pushed at a glass set of double doors down a half-flight of stairs on the mezzanine below.

"Hang back, keep an eye on the door," Strand told Nick and Tyler as he advanced towards the far side of the room, towards another door, past the soldier being eaten. (From what Paul could see, it looked like he died from having his throat ripped out.) "Don't worry, they're slow, and this one's busy," Strand said by way of explanation. 

Paul crouched next to the first soldier and started checking him for anything useful. Pistol with a round in the chamber, two in the clip, and an extra clip. He still had his knife, which Paul took and stuck through his eye, twisting for good measure.

A choked gurgling noise caught his attention. The other soldier.

"Melvin?" Strand asked. 

Barely audible over the background noise, Paul heard Melvin rasp, "K-kill me." Strand ignored his plea and the walker gnawing at Melvin's ankle as he rifled through Melvin's pockets, retrieving his cufflinks. He lifted Melvin's hand, looked at his wrist, and said, "You can keep the watch."

Paul had seen enough. He stormed over, stabbing the walker through the head, then he stabbed Melvin through the throat, ending his suffering before stabbing him in the eye. Just then, the door at the other end of the room burst open and the dead streamed in. In the last possible second, Paul picked up Melvin's pistol -- hopefully the fucker hadn't emptied his clip -- and, grabbing Strand by the arm, propelled him towards the door. "You never leave anybody dying or dead to come back and bite you in the ass!" he roared.

He turned to shut and lock the door, but by then it was too late. 

Down the hall they ran, lights flickering on and off as somewhere in the building the last remaining generators began their death rattles. 

The double doors ahead of them, the doors they had come through not five minutes earlier, had locked when Strand shut them.

 _Shit. Fuck. Goddamn! Not like this. Not like this!_ Paul handed the knife to Tyler. "All of you, get behind me."

He whipped Melvin's pistol up and fired. Pop. Pop. Pop. Three of them dropped, but the rest just stumbled over and kept on coming. Empty. Paul dropped it and drew the other soldier's pistol. Despite the strobing lights, all of his shots connected. He ejected the clip and slapped in the next one, doing the awful mental math of how many of them could he kill before he had to shoot Nick, Tyler, and Strand, because no fucking way --

Strand and Tyler hauled him, gasping, and still squeezing off a few last rounds, through the now miraculously open door before Nick barred it by sliding a mop through the handles.

_What the --?! Who?! Where did …?!_

Over the thundering of his heart in his ears he pieced it together from the garbled conversations around him.

Family.

 _Nick's_ Family.

Nick introduced him and Strand as "the guys who saved me" and Tyler as, "he's cool."

Paul caught a few more bits and pieces about somebody waiting in the parking garage as they scrambled back down the hall, lead by a woman in nurses' scrubs, not back towards the pens, but down a different hallway, and Paul gave up trying to make a detailed mental map. It didn't matter any more. No matter what direction they went from this point forward, it was out.

It went sideways again in the kitchen. Things had gone bad so quickly out there that the cooks hadn't even turned off the stoves before fleeing. Water still boiled away in the kettles, waiting for the rest of the soup fixings that would never come. And as they got about halfway through, the smell of rotting corpses and the metallic odor of fresh blood hit their noses. Paul didn't even have time to shout a warning before the first of the skinbags lurched from behind a prep station. He popped it, and the one that followed right behind, between the eyes with his last two bullets and then he was down to fending them off with the barrel of the pistol while he frantically looked around for something -- a knife, a frying pan on the stove, a rolling pin -- anything to beat them back and re-kill them. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tyler desperately flailing with the knife on the other side of the counter ( _Fuck! Somebody needed to teach him how to use a knife!_ ), but it might as well have been a chain-link fence topped with razor wire for all that Paul could get to him.

A walker pinned him against the counter ( _Shit!_ ) when its head suddenly caved in. The Blonde lady (who he thought was Nick's mother) dispatched it with a hammer and then laid several more to waste.

Paul tucked the pistol in his waistband and ran over to a shaking, gore-covered Tyler, "Are you okay?!" 

"Y-yes!" Tyler managed to get out as his body trembled from the adrenaline blast. "I'm not bit! W-what about you?" 

"It's all them." Paul slung an arm over his shoulder and pulled him close as they headed down yet another hallway, "I'll teach you knife fighting as soon as we get out of here, promise."

"Here, take it," Tyler said, passing the blade to him. 

~oo(0)oo~

They followed the Nurse down the hallway towards the medical center. Two of their group, an older Hispanic man with hard, knowing eyes, and a younger woman with a delicate face, insisted on going there … even though the person they wanted had already died, and been "taken care of." 

Paul glanced over at Strand and saw it in his eyes. What nonsense. An indulgence they didn't have time for right now, given the need for immediate survival. When people died next to you in a combat situation, you kept on going, because your duty was to the living.

He kept his mouth shut, though, because he had nothing but a knife, while they had guns and were his ride.

~oo(0)oo~

The industrial scale medical ward contained bed after bed of corpses. All killed with a blow from an air bolt to the head. Like cattle. It was as humane as it was horrible. In the middle of it all, stood a dark haired woman doctor. Doubtless she'd had the task of putting them all down.

Paul wondered for a moment if this was the original plan for all the people down in the pens. Call them up pen by pen, call it medical out processing, take them into a room and wham-wham-wham, lights out. Drag the bodies away, give the place a quick wipe down, bring up the next batch.

Right.

He took Tyler by the shoulder. "We need to get supplies." He indicated Nick's mother who was busily stocking her bag. He grabbed a pillow from a bed -- its occupant no longer needed it -- stripped the pillow case off and handed it to Tyler. "Grab everything you can. We'll sort it out later."

Grabbing his own pillowcase, Paul stuffed it with everything else he could find: injection kits, epi-pens, alcohol wipes, ointment, bandaids, bandages, scissors, and even a scalpel, not stopping until it was full.

"We have to go now," Nick's mother said. In the background, if a person listened hard enough, you could hear _them_ coming.

In the middle of the room, the Nurse argued with the Doctor, who held the airbolt in her hand. She looked limp with resignation. "Where do you think your family's going to go?" The Doctor asked, slumping down to an empty cot, pondering the blood-caked bolt gun in her hand.

"There has to be somewhere," The Nurse replied.

The Doctor sighed. "There is a way out, past the ICU -- set of stairs down takes you through the sublevel. You can get out, but there's nowhere to go."

"Come with us!" The Nurse pleaded as the sound of the approaching dead became louder. "There are people you can still help!" 

The Doctor shook her head, and Nick's mom walked over and gently touched the Nurse on the arm. "Liza, we have to go. She's _lost_. C'mon."

As they turned away the air compressor spooled up.

Paul was almost out of the room when he heard the sound of the bolt. Tyler flinched. Paul reached out and gripped his shoulder gently. "Don't give up."

Tyler smiled darkly at him. "If I was that kind, I'd be dead long ago, or," his voice dropped to a whisper as he indicated Nick, "like him."

After the door latched behind them, Paul took advantage of the time to get everybody else's name. Nick's Mom was Madison, her boyfriend, a tall Hispanic guy, was Cliff, the older Hispanic man with the dark and angry eyes was Daniel Salazar, his daughter was Ofelia. Apparently his wife had been taken here and "didn't make it." Liza the nurse was Cliff's ex. Cliff's son, Chris, and Madison's daughter, Alicia, were waiting in one of the parking garages with the getaway vehicles. Paul had to admire their devotion to family, because, frankly, his mother, doubtless dead in her trailer or shambling about, would not have done a damn thing to help him, or his family. Not unless there was something for her in it.

A few strides later, Strand asked Madison about their plans. They planned to go east to the desert.

 _You're about two weeks late on that one._ "That's a no go," Paul replied. "Listen, I used to be a CHiP. The roads east are closed, and I don't just mean traffic jams and accidents, but military barricades where The 5 meets The 14, and again at Caswell where The 5 meets The 138 East, The 14 again at Soledad Pass, The 2 at La Cañada-Flintridge, The 15 at Cajon Pass, The 10 at Banning, and The 74 at the Santa Rosa Reservation. Road blocks and accidents took care of the county roads up by Castaic, as well as over the San Gabriels, and though I don't know where they blocked The 8, The 78, or the county roads south of The 74, trust me, they're closed."

"We should head west," Strand declared, picking a bit of lint off of his lapel. "I have a home on the water. I have supplies. I'm prepared."

Madison and Cliff looked at each other and nodded. "West it is," she said.

~oo(0)oo~

They stumbled out of the hall into the weak rays of early morning sunlight and a courtyard that reeked of gasoline and burnt meat … like a barbeque gone horribly wrong. Paul gagged when he saw it -- the two huge piles of ashes and human bones -- and stomped down _hard_ on memories of Iraq and Afghanistan. _Those places have no meaning anymore,_ he told himself. _Nothing you did back there back then will ever come back to bite you in the ass. Get over it. Get over it. Get over it._

Tyler gripped his arm and clapped his other hand over a gasp. Paul followed the look in his horrified eyes to a little girl's doll on the nearest pile. Barely even singed -- wavy blonde hair, blue eyes staring up at all the nothing overhead, red and white dress with ruffle along the edge.

_Shit._

Ophelia broke down and started to sob with grief over her mother.

Her father grabbed her, gave her a good shake to get her attention, and said in a no-nonsense tone, "Lower your voice. The dead will hear you."

Paul took Tyler by the arm and said, "Come. When you're going through hell, the trick is to keep on going."

~oo(0)oo~

Murphy wasn't done getting his licks in. When they reached the parking garage, it turned out that one of the vehicles, an SUV, being guarded by Alicia and Chris had been stolen from them at gunpoint by some soldiers.

"Because what could possibly go wrong with leaving some spoiled kids from the suburbs behind to guard things," Tyler muttered to Paul under his breath. Paul choked back a laugh.

Before they could reach the other vehicles -- Madison's Toyota Camry and Cliff's ancient Ford pickup -- a crazed soldier, arm bandaged, lurched out at them from his hiding place, waving a pistol, shouting for Salazar. Paul didn't think, just acted, body checking both Tyler and Nick to the side of a van. "Get down and stay down!" he hissed at them. He could see Cliff angling to work around instead of taking the shot and dropping him, while Ophelia pleaded with the soldier -- clearly she knew him well -- begging for her father's life, saying that it was all over now, he could just walk away. Paul urgently looked for something small, a pebble, a washer, a piece of glass to throw at the soldier and distract him. The moment he saw it, an old brown penny next to an oil spot, he heard the shot.

Ophelia.

Motherfucker.

He reached her about the same time that Liza did. "I'm a combat veteran, I've seen gunshot wounds," he told her. As he worked with Liza to do what they could to quickly clean and bandage Ophelia's wound, he had a dim awareness of Cliff beating the soldier. Pale and gasping in pain, they set Ophelia on the tailgate of the truck. Under the circumstances there wasn't time to go through Madison's or Tyler's pillowcases of pill bottles. They had nothing stronger to give the poor girl than two advil from Alicia's purse, and two tylenol from Madison.

Paul gently squeezed her hand as he eased her into her father's arms in the back of the truck. "I've been shot before. I how much it hurts. You'll be okay, but's going to suck until Liza can get you really doped up."

He settled in the corner opposite of them, Tyler next to him. Liza sat across from Ophelia and Daniel. The flats of water and other gear made it a very tight fit.

"Here." Tyler passed him a pistol. "I got it from that soldier." 

Paul ejected the clip and checked it. Five rounds. "Good move." _From here on out, a pistol and bullets are going to be like gold._

"I had to do it," Daniel said as the truck climbed the exit ramp. He stroked his daughter's hair. "I had to do it."

Paul put two and two together. "You ... _interrogated_ him."

Daniel's eyes bored into his. "They had my wife." No plea for understanding or acceptance. Just a statement of fact.

"I get it." Paul nodded and let the matter drop. _Thank you. Because if you hadn't, Tyler and I would still be in there, rats in a cage._

They started on the surface streets, Paul using the pistol to dispatch a walker who got too close, but the freeways looked hopeless, and a few minutes, and pair of bolt cutters later, they drove down the embankment into the LA River.

Tyler silently took Paul's hand into his and together they watched the flaming skyscrapers of downtown recede into the distance. Other than a few derelict cars and a walker or two, the most noteworthy thing in the channel was a crashed and burnt helicopter … one that was probably fleeing the compound when it crashed. He wondered if the skyscrapers had been set on fire by helicopters crashing into them or misfired munitions.

Just before the river joined the sea in Long Beach, they turned and drove through mostly silent streets, everybody had tried to flee east, or had been liquidated, or taken to a detention camp. The few walkers who did shamble after them were too far and too few to be any danger. After winding their way up a hill, they arrived at a fancy gated and walled compound. Paul could smell the sea, and the fresh breeze carried the occasional cry of a sea gull. He gazed at the eastern horizon, a clear day with no haze in the greater LA Basin, a few white cottony clouds dotted the endless blue of the sky. 

Another time, it would have been a perfect day.

"What is this place?" Tyler asked, swinging a leg over the side of the truck. "Malibu?"

"Nope. Rancho Palos Verdes," Paul said. "We're just north of Long Beach."

Strand walked over to the gate, punched in a code, and it rattled open. "Generators kicked in as soon as the power went offline," he explained.

Paul's jaw dropped when he entered the house. Modern, open floor plan, with a sweeping view of the ocean through the floor to ceiling glass of the living room. The backyard had a pool and a firepit, as well as a generous swath of grass. At the edge of the patio stood a nice telescope, because out here, a person could do that, watch the stars or look at the moon without too much light interfering. One of the perks of being the 1%.

Only now, every clear night for a long time coming was going to be splashed with a sky full of stars. Paul would see the Milky Way again. He wondered if Tyler had ever seen it.

(The one fucking nice thing about serving over there. All the stars in the night sky.)

Looking at Tyler, Paul could see the same sort of wowed expression on his face. Growing up the way they did, places like this might as well have been on Mars for all that guys like them got to visit.

Strand indicated the kitchen, "Anyone hungry? Help yourself."

Paul's stomach growled, but the words that came out of his mouth were, "Hey, does this place come with a shower and a clean pair of sweats I can bum?"

~oo(0)oo~

Rich guys like Strand didn't have sweats. They had multiple designer tracksuits and a rack full of TShirts to go with them. Strand handed him several of each, plus a pair of socks and an unopened pack of boxer shorts before showing him to the guest suite.

There wasn't a damn thing Strand could do about shoe size, though. But Paul would manage in socks long enough to wash his dirty trousers or find a pair of jeans to wear with his boots.

~oo(0)oo~

The water in the shower had just gotten warm enough to stand under, and Paul had the door open to a stall the size of the whole bathroom in the singlewide he grew up in, when Tyler entered, causing Paul to freeze as Tyler's eyes raked over his body, skimming over the bruises and scrapes, but lingering once again on his scars. When Tyler finally met Paul's gaze, his eyes had no disgust in them, only that hot flare of desire Paul remembered from his workout. His dick twitched in response.

"Mind if I join you?" Tyler smiled as he asked the question. Not coy or shy at all, just open and honest about what he wanted. "We don't know how much longer this place is going to have hot water. We should conserve." That last bit held more than a little tease.

Paul entered the shower, looking over his shoulder in invitation. "You're right." A part of him couldn't believe this, not because he hadn't done it before, but because for the first time ever, _that voice_ , that awful voice which told him all the things that he couldn't have in his life if he went with guys, the one that told him he wasn't a real man, the one that told him to be afraid, the one that told him he needed to hide, _that voice_ fell silent.

Because all the things it held over him were gone. 

And they were not coming back.

They meant nothing, now.

(Out with the old, in with the new.)

Paul sucked in a ragged gasp of warm, steamy air and his whole body prickled with gooseflesh despite the hot water as a wave of emotion -- an emotion he had no word for -- shot through him, and when it passed, he felt as if a great weight had been removed, a weight he had lived with for so long that he had forgotten what life was like without it. 

(He felt free in a way he hadn't been since that day when he was 9 years old and couldn't stop staring at the young lineman who had shinnied up that old telephone pole behind their lot using only his boots and the leather strap. How Paul had been fascinated by his broad shoulders, his powerful forearms, the hint of five o'clock shadow on his chin, the sweat damp curls sticking out from beneath his hard hat, but most especially that strip of hair that ran down into his jeans when his shirt rode up. And knowing, even at that tender age, that he couldn't talk about this to his mom or anybody else, even though Paul couldn't quite say how or why he knew that the things that made the lineman so wonderful/amazing/delicious/perfect to him, also made him one of _THOSE_ people, those others. And life was hard enough already with everybody at school calling his mom a whore because she stripped down at the Pussycat and had that revolving door of men in her life.)

Tyler climbed in, hard and ready to go. His dick was long and thin and had a bright red-purple mushroom head that Paul longed to taste. (And he promised himself he would, soon.) Paul didn't see any sign of tracks on Tyler's slightly too-thin frame.

Picking up on what Paul's looks meant, Tyler rotated his arms and even held up one foot, wiggling his toes. "I might be a party boy, but I don't have a monkey on my back."

Paul blushed a little at being caught, then handed him an expensive looking bottle of bodywash. "Scrub first, fun after." He'd gotten fully hard by this point, and Tyler unconsciously licked his lips when he saw it. Some guys were longer, but Paul was also thick, and in his experience, that counted for something, too.

They'd stepped out and gotten to the damp-dry stage of toweling off when Paul did what he wanted to do since that first night in the club, before he'd even seen Tyler's cock: dropped to his knees and took it, still rock hard, into his mouth. Tyler's little gasp of surprise and delight told Paul everything he wanted to hear. He lapped at the pre-come welling from the tip, delighted by its tangy salty taste. Inside, Paul chuckled at the fact that all it took was the end of the world for him to finally be okay with the fact that blowing a guy and getting _him_ off did more for him than fucking any woman ever had.

It had been so long since Paul had even a taste of what he really wanted -- he griped Tyler's hip in one hand and stroked the base of his shaft with the other as he really went to work with his mouth -- that just getting it sent him to the edge. The heat of Tyler's cock against his lips and tongue, the silk-satin feel of the skin, the smell, the taste, all went straight to Paul's groin and pooled there, like a roiling cauldron of molten rock, ready to erupt at any moment. It amped up another notch when he felt the micro-shivers start racing through Tyler's body, felt Tyler's gentle and controlled thrusts to meet his mouth take on a jittery and ragged edge, and when he felt Tyler's cock swell that last fraction, Paul went as deep as he could, but at the same time he clenched the base of his own dick so hard so hard it hurt to stop it from shooting, as Tyler pulsed and pulsed and pulsed into his mouth, and he struggled to keep up with the volume as he greedily gulped every drop down.

When they both gained control of themselves enough to move, Paul, his throbbing dick now slick and shiny from pre-come, took Tyler's hand in his, and on shaky legs, led him to the bed.

"Listen, I'm clean," Tyler said as he scooted back on the covers.

"I don't have a condom, so that's seriously not on the menu right now." Paul climbed on to the bed and gently pressed Tyler to lie back against the pillows. "I do like to kiss, though. That's not negotiable."

Tyler grinned up at him. "I like kissing, too. With the right guy, it's _really_ hot."

Paul pressed his body against Tyler's, felt Tyler's arms wrap around him, and dived in for a kiss. He only got a few good thrusts -- his dick chafing oh so perfectly against Tyler's pelvis -- before his too-long denied need overtook him and he shot and shot and shot so hard that the world greyed out a bit along the edges. He collapsed, panting, and it took several seconds before he could function enough to slide limply to the side before he rolled on to his back. He pulled in a deep breath and pushed it out again before looking over at Tyler.

The world outside had gone to hell in a handbasket, and here they both were with slap-happy grins on.

Tyler shifted off the bed and came back a few minutes later with a wet washcloth and carefully wiped Paul clean before tackling the sticky mess Paul had left all over his torso.

Before either of them could speak, Paul's stomach growed loudly, echoed a moment later by an even fiercer rumbling from Tyler's.

"Fuck, I'm hungry." Tyler rolled off the bed.

Strand's tracksuit and boxers fit Paul pretty well, but Tyler swam in his. Paul smiled at him and said, "Don't worry, we'll find us something else soon."

~oo(0)oo~

They walked back into the main part of the house just in time to hear Nick's response to something Madison said, "It's like I've been living this for a long time, and now everyone is catching up with me."

Paul thought about that as he and Tyler made sandwiches and grabbed a bottle of juice from Trader Joes out of the fridge.

_I lived like this back in the Middle East, and during that time, I was as right with the world as I ever have been. It was so fucking perfect somehow: Miguel and me vs. them, and fuck THEM, because whatever it took, it was going to be US. It seemed like what I was meant to do, it was so clear to me. And then I came back here and it was all just shit again._

"What are you thinking?" Tyler asked a moment before he tore into his sandwich.

 _I was born for this._ He knew it now, knew it to the core of his being. 

"Paul?" Tyler's voice snapped him back.

Paul held up a finger, took a huge bite of his sandwich, chewed and swallowed as he gazed out at the ocean, smiling blandly all the while. 

Eventually he replied, voice calm and quiet: 

"It's going to be you and me, Tyler. You and me against the world, and _fuck_ the world."


End file.
